Apparently I wasn’t quite finished yet, but I should have been a Saint Nicholas child. Two weeks after the biggest event in a Dutch child’s life I was born after all. The 5 December Sinterklaas fest is in my blood. And one can hardly insult me more than to bring me a birthday present in Christmas wrapping.

My mom was trained well as her little sister’s birthday is on the 22nd. Hence the tree was always bought on 23 december, after which Christmas started. The tree went out promptly on 6 January, as good Cath’lics should - fixed dates remain even after leaving the church. Same same in our family; my Christmas doesn’t start until after my birthday.

This makes it a little tragic to have moved to a country with a large Anglo-Saxon influence. Christmas in South Africa starts in September - at the same time the first pepernoten (Sinterklaas spice cookies) appear in Dutch shops the first red/green ornaments surface here and shopkeepers start dictating the wish lists.

The Holy Obligation is rooted deeply. The poor souls don’t know Sinterklaas so it’s no wonder their Christmas is pimped so much heavier than in the Netherlands. Although some aspects remain confusing on the other side of the world, where it is summer. Earlier this month the six-year-olds asked my daughter’s teacher what all those snow references were hinting at.

It is quite a task to honour the real Saint Nicholas here. I taught my daughters that Father Christmas is a brother of Sinterklaas - many things are the same but the details differ (in truth Sinterklaas is his predecessor). Their embarrassment for a ‘different’ event has turned into empathy: friends only get presents once in December. But peer pressure is heavy and I have to confess that it’s not easy going against the Christmas tide. The Dutch world service helps a bit to keep spirits up, although they sadly don’t see the importance of broadcasting the daily childrens’ Sinterklaas news on the day proper. And I pine for the huge Sinterklaas family gatherings at my grandparents’. Festive chaos.

Even though my mother and father are now elderly, a big plus of emigrating is that I no longer have to rush all over the country at Christmas time. Several times I had a beloved whose parents were divorced as well so we had to wring four visits into two days. Always three out of four were insulted that Christmas dinner (on the 25th) was not at their place. Long live my last mother in law, who decided that her do was to be institutionalised on Christmas Eve.

The Holy Obligation. Two days criss-cross though the country to bide one’s time with basically nice people who you, the introvert, don’t relate to at all. Mandatorily doing nothing whatsoever, and how fortunate we are having so much food. It was a blessing (the church lingo lingers) having a job that enabled me to work on Boxing Day evening. Peace at last.

Here, silence. The country has closed for the summer holidays, all of Johannesburg relocated to the coast. I will celebrate my birthday in January. This may be my first Lonely (This) Christmas although unlike Mud that won’t make me sad nor yearning for booze. The kidlets are with their father; for the first time I wasn’t invited over for Christmas. And that is alright. A woman I know ponders hosting a Christmas picnic because-we-are-not-forlorn. Instead I will jump in my pool and concoct my big birthday bash. Happy holidays!

This morning I attended a funeral service, to help support a friend of only 26 whose dad had passed away. Her family is Christian but there was quite some resemblance to my Catholic uncle's service in Pretoria a few years ago.

I seem to remember that at the time we had fleeting thoughts of things being organised a bit hastily due to some family members having to fly home soon, but today it often went exactly the same. Especially the part where the coffin leaves the church in a car on its way to the crematorium, where no one will attend the ceremonies; today as well the family said goodbye for the last time on the parking lot. In my heart I'm still an old skool kathlik I think because I didn't like that. We shall have decorum!

Another friend even found it a rather um, morbid idea that prior to the service the family would be in a separate room with coffin and all, to have their last private moments with the deceased physically present. Yuckie. Moreover, at today's service the coffin was even left standing in the hall! Photo plus open bible on top ('the lord is my shepherd'), but still. I found that sad. Apart from that it was a good service, dad was obviously a much-loved man. Leukemia is a bitch, said daughter off the record.

It was also enlightening that the service was more or less bilingual; the preacher spoke in Afrikaans and then summarised in English. Which often sounded very different :) I noted the man was so much more at ease in English, although Afrikaans is audibly his mother tongue. English must be his working language.

In ieder geval: ook al schoot de bananen-smaakstof uit, het ging goed. Het werd best veel, en zelfgemaakt is eens te meer totaal verslavend. Dit is het allerlaatste beetje van die eerste batch.To cite my friend Jayne: fudge is Evil. It is so bad that we need to eat it all ourselves in order to prevent our kidlings from its nasty effects.

On top of that it is heavily addictive. Recently one of the foodies on Twitter encouraged me to make some myself, after I'd done a little test of shop fudge and concluded it was all just not it. I had thought of that myself, hence time to get going.

I am not exactly known as a kitchen heroine, although I used to be good at baking cakes, in the distant past. But fudge is not difficult. And I once made a treat called borstplaat for a special occasion, which is somewhat similar. Fudge adds condensed milk and butter to that recipe, so it is completely unsuitable for a dairy allergy. Bugger.

Anyway: despite accidentally adding too much banana aroma it went well. It turned out rather much, and home made is all the more totally addictive. The pic is the very last bit of the first batch.

De wedstrijd zelf? Ik was inmiddels zo opgefokt dat ik de eerste zeven kilometer helemaal niks meer uit de benen kreeg, maar verder ging het goed, haha. Eigenlijk is dit een betoog over hoe goed het al die andere keren georganiseerd wordt!It was hot and it was far... A classic Dutch complaint. I don't do that often, so here I go.
I participated in a race in Centurion, more or less South Pretoria. Silly enough there they think that it's a great plan to do an event like that in the afternoon, instead of early in the morning like all the other matches. That may give an indication of how seriously they take it ;)
Anyway, it's fiiiiiinally spring so it was ridiculously hot. 28°C is really too hot to run a 10k.

But I had entered long before, so on with it. Turned out to be in a (cricket) stadium that peculiarly enough has no proper parking plan at all, not to speak of the way there (or maybe I should: guide the traffic from the highway three times across the entire width of the road so all other traffic is blocked).

Practically all races here are well organised, but this one saw thousands of participants who couldn't even get to the starting street, squashed in a connecting area. I found it scary, which doesn't happen easily. Then the start was ten minutes late. Just to say, my toes curled because these are huge irritations that are so easy to solve.

The race itself? I was by then so uptight and hot that I couldn't get anything out of my legs in the first seven kilometres, but apart from that it all went fine, haha. This is actually a discourse about how well it's organised all those other times!